Sunday, February 20, 2022

ALONE, LONELY? -- HUMILIATING MOMENTS PART I

Lying in bed at night, just before I fall asleep, sometimes unusual thoughts or memories emerge unbidden into my mind.  I have no idea why any particular content appears since I'm usually thinking of nothing at that point in time when I'm about to drowse off.  A few curious events intruding into my mind recently included some humiliating moments with one especially so that I experienced as a pre-teen.   

We had moved to the country where we lived for a little over a year.  This city girl had previously visited family living in a rural area, even helped with some chores on my uncle's dairy farm.  These included aiding harvesting hay for the coming winter by driving a hand-clutch Farmall tractor, later leading the horse to pull a trip-wire fork of hay to drop into the barn's hayloft.  Living year 'round in the country in a house where the bathroom was an outhouse was quite a different matter as I discovered from those few weeks in the summer where the family house at least had indoor plumbing.  

In the city I previously could occasionally be with friends, though in the country there was no one my age living nearby.   I have a sense now of the feelings young people experience in our current pandemic, especially if they have become accustomed to almost constant contact with their friends and have other family nearby.   They probably have their own phones, but in my generation we didn't spend time chattering on the phone, much less had our own phone, or at least I didn't.   Youth today can text or interact on the internet, too, which wasn't available to me, plus we didn't even have a house phone in the country.

Where we had moved, should someone want to reach me, I was quite isolated from any contemporaries.  I no longer had the singular independence given me by city buses to transport me to some of my favored past times, by allowing me to ride downtown to the library, roller skating rink, movie theater to view musicals, all in addition to my Girl Scout activities.

That country living was when I became acutely aware of sometimes becoming lonely or unhappy.  I eventually learned I could be alone there and not lonely, that I was responsible for my own happiness, partly based on my own attitude which I could control.  When I complained of being bored, my mother (who grew up on a farm) said I would have to find new additional ways to entertain myself differently than I had been accustomed to doing.  

Consequently, adapting and adjusting to profound changes of which these were just more, became very important lessons I learned at an early age.  They became significant to me for coping with the rest of my life.  This became especially valuable when I became a widow entering my older years, then subsequently as friends and relatives increasingly began leaving this life.    The pandemic's limitations  have added more challenges.  

When school started that fall in the country, I had to walk alone three-quarters of a mile to catch the school bus, often in the dark during cold snowy winter months, then ride for an hour over the entire trip before arriving at school only two-and-a-half miles from our house since I boarded at the beginning of the route.  Girls could only wear pants to keep our legs warm until we reached school, then we had to be wearing skirts or dresses.  

The teachers didn't know me, of course, a new student.   So on one occasion when an event motivated me to speak up to the teacher privately as the class left the room, to express heart-felt empathy to her after a very rude student had caused her to reprimand him, I was taken aback she was not receptive to what I said.  Embarrassingly to me, I was chastised for speaking to her, then told to stay in my seat excluded from recess which the rest of the class had taken outside. 

I never understood how what I said provoked her since the very rude insulting student was allowed to go outside for recess.  So much for the warm trusting respectful relationship I had appreciated which seemed to be mutual with my teachers through my previous six elementary school grades in the city.   Well, there was that occasion when the city teacher wracked my knuckles with a wooden ruler for writing notes with my boyfriend.   Another day that same city teacher had me read the spelling words to the class as she left the room because she was having a heart attack we learned later.

Then, at my new school there was the instance of total invasion of my personal privacy I thought then, in a day when girls, especially, were taught and expected to be very modest about their bodies.  Seems there was an infestation of scabies in the school or community, a bug of some sort which I'd never even heard of before.   We were sent off to the nurse's office where one by one we went into her room, not really knowing what was to occur.  

My turn came and I was suddenly being told to expose my genital area to this strange woman -- totally contrary to everything my mother had taught me about my privacy and rights, especially after my having been sexually molested when I was preschool age.   I politely resisted and then, adding insult to injury, the nurse started using what I considered offensive cajoling baby talk and euphemistic terms to me in her effort to gain my cooperation.  Despite this, I did ultimately allow her to complete what must have been a less than pleasant task for her, too, though I didn't think about that then.  I was so disgusted and again, embarrassed.  

There was never an occasion for me to see other classmates outside of school and none lived nearby as I said.  So, to have some sort of social life, make new friends, I signed up at school to join a nationally prominent organization that will remain unnamed with separate clubs  for farm boys and girls.  I don't wish to cast the organization in a negative light since overall they provide a very beneficial positive experience for so many young people.   As is often the case,  youth groups are only as good as their    well-intentioned leaders who as human beings can be less than perfect.   

The most humiliating experience I had during this time in my life I will describe next week in Part II since this has become so lengthy.   

Strange, isn't it, what comes into our thoughts at times though we may not have been thinking about anything remotely related, or even anything at all for that matter.    

 

19 comments:

  1. Such experiences can have serious impact on growing children as I too well know. By the time I started high school, I had already been to four other schools and had experienced different types of teachers and classmates. After high school, I had to move to a different city where the predominant language was different to what is my mother tongue and that took some time to adjust to. Yes, part of those years were lonely but, I think that they gave me the resilience needed to live the way my later adult life unfolded. Now, I am better equipped to be alone with myself than many of my friends and relatives who actually wonder how I can be so.

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    1. Changing schools can be a challenging experience. Language differences could only add more complications. Some of us are able to make the most of such situations as you seem to have done, but others may not be able to do so. The following year we moved, 1948, I was in four different schools in three different states with weeks out of school as we drove across the country then part way back again living in a very small house trailer with two dogs. Attitude was all as i chose to view the whole experience as an adventure.

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  2. My goodness, with that childhood you really can relate to the youngsters of today being isolated.
    I remember that pulling down the panties inspection in grade school, just really didn't know what it was for. We all had to do it. Oddly my inspector was a man. Don't think I told my parents about that one.

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    1. I think you and I didn't even live in the same state then, so those scabies must have been all over the country. An examination by a strange non-doctor male could easily have been more off-putting for me, or some girls.

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    2. nowadays that 'inspector' would be closely investigated and, to my mind, rightly so.

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  3. Thank you, Joared, for bringing this to light. When I wake up at night, I often have unexpected thoughts about things that are unresolved from my past. The same thing can happen when I am waking up in the morning and at times throughout the day. I heard somewhere that these things come up so that they can be healed. I related so much to what you've written today and look forward to Part II.

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    1. I guess we must just drift off to some mental state where our unconscious is flowing through and we're just alert enough to capture the thoughts. No doubt scientists somewhere have studied and written about this.

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  4. It's strange what our minds give us to think about sometimes. It's hard to know what triggers a certain incident of memory: a smell, an atmosphere, a similar circumstance, an object; all of these or a combination of any could bring up a past association. When the memory is painful or poignant, it's hard to let it go.

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    1. I think emotionally loaded events do tend to stay in our memories more, perhaps recorded in more areas of our brain. Still, it seems a strange time to emerge as mine did this time.

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  5. Your experiences during that time were simply awful. I have had some bad experiences, too, which I don't like to recall. Nothing funny about them, either.

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    1. So many of us go through unwelcome experiences from which we can learn — much more unpleasant than mine.

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  6. Very odd that when you sympathised with the teacher over the rude student it was you she penalised and not him. Hardly the way to get the best out of a new student!

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    1. I thought it weird, too, but after her reaction i didn't have the courage to say anything more to her, instead going over and over in my head how what I said was wrong. I don't remember now what the boy had said and what I said.

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  7. So much harm can be done to pupils and students by incompetent and uncaring teachers. It follows us into our lives and somehow we can never forget the moments of shame, embarrassment, mixed messages and insensitivity. I wonder how many children come away totally unscathed?

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    1. That's an interesting question you ask. Hopefully there aren’t too many.

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  8. I remember writing an article on my school days a long time ago. You refreshed the weirdness of it all. Briefly, in one instance, we had to literally "groom" one teacher, brush her down, fix her hair, polish her shoes. A little team of us in Grade 3. It was normal, then. She'd reward her pets with cake and biscuits.
    I craved alone time, as I was the eldest of 6, all boys apart from a baby sister who arrived much later. The house was small and it was so hard to escape. I've always been able to entertain myself.

    XO
    WWW

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    1. Having to groom your teacher really does seem incredible but strange things happen. I know during my daughters elementary school years, 4th grade or so, I think, a male teacher used to reward his pets by letting them sit under his desk which a friend of my daughter was.

      In a small house with so many I can well understand how a desire for privacy would be prized and a girl might wish to be away from so many brothers from time to time.

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  9. Glad you are here now.

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    1. We weather these experiences as children though they may influence our lives one way or another whether we know it or not.

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